If we buy it, it will come

SOMETIMES THE ONLY WAY to find out if a technology works is to try it. And the only way to see if it is profitable is to try to sell it.

It is a lesson familiar to billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who doesn’t like to wait for new technologies to ripen before biting into them. The strategy has paid off big for him -- he launched an online broadcasting venture before most people even knew what the Internet was, eventually selling out to Yahoo for $5.7 billion.

On Thursday, Cuban headed back into the technology frontier. His HDNet, which broadcasts high-definition video via satellite, began offering lengthy free samples of its programming online. That makes HDNet one of the first commercial broadcasters to send high-definition video, a cinematic format rich in detail and color, through the Internet.

To cut costs and speed downloads, the programs are being delivered through a copyright-friendly “file-sharing” network similar to the original Napster and Kazaa, which millions have used to download bootlegged copies of movies and music. This network will allow users to download many small bits of the files simultaneously from other users’ machines.

Executives at Hollywood studios and major record labels often say they have nothing against file-sharing technology, which is the most cost-effective way to deliver large files through the Net. But so far it’s been nothing but talk, much to the frustration of companies such as El Segundo’s Red Swoosh, which is providing the network for HDNet.

Meanwhile, the main source of high-definition programming online is pirated material. Hollywood seems more interested in protecting high-definition movies against theft than in selling them online to the growing number of homes with high-definition TVs.

Granted, the files are so large that it takes patience to download them. The first HDNet offering, a 20-minute set of highlights of the latest space shuttle launch, can take three hours or more to download over a typical broadband connection.

Cuban acknowledges that the time may not yet be ripe for high-definition video online. But as we all learned in the dot-com era -- when each week seemed to bring some new service or gadget to try -- we often don’t know we want it until we see it.